


Paenitemus

by ofrainyskiesandviolets



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Bending (Avatar TV), Angst, Bisexual Sokka (Avatar), Depression, F/M, Gay Zuko (Avatar), Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues, Sokka (Avatar) Has ADHD, Sokka (Avatar) Needs a Hug, Sokka (Avatar)-centric, Suicidal Thoughts, Zuko is an Awkward Turtleduck, no beta we die like jet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-10
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-17 03:20:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29343456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ofrainyskiesandviolets/pseuds/ofrainyskiesandviolets
Summary: What Sokka always wants to say isI’m sorry. To everyone and no one in particular. He doesn’t know why it started, but he does know that the urge to apologize crops up constantly––when he took Katara’s toys as a kid, when he saw someone’s home destroyed on the news, when someone else knocked overhisthings.There’s no real rhyme or reason, but it consumes every part of his being. Constantly, constantly.I’m sorry.Started from a writing prompt: "What I always wanted to say was..." and it snowballed into this 12k slice-of-life/mental health/coming out/reflection piece.
Relationships: Hakoda & Sokka (Avatar), Katara & Sokka (Avatar), Sokka & Suki (Avatar), Sokka/Suki (Avatar), Sokka/Yue (Avatar), Sokka/Zuko (Avatar), zukka is the endgame
Comments: 28
Kudos: 130





	Paenitemus

**Author's Note:**

> CW: suicidal ideation, depression, negative self-talk, etc.
> 
> Sokka/Suki and Sokka/Yue are brief, Sokka/Zuko is the end goal.
> 
> I do edit, but I don't have a beta reader, so apologies for any mistakes I overlooked. I always go back in and edit more later.

When Sokka is in the first grade, he’s taken into a room with the school counselor and an adult he’s never met before. They ask him questions, and he tries and fails to sit still in his seat. He’s in there for a long time. He misses the rest of math and all of reading, which definitely doesn’t make him sad, he can do the reading just fine on his own! (Even if he does prefer reading the stories when there’s people like Yue and his other friends to make funny voices and fill in the spaces of silence.)

The counselor regards him with kind eyes before sending him to catch up with his class on their way to lunch. He shares his sandwich with Yue, then scrapes the balls of his thumbs falling off the monkey bars, slick with frost and bitter weather. His day is once again flurried, excitable voices and winter-split-lip grins under the slide, and he forgets all about the exchange.

His parents are called into the school a few days later, and Sokka is pulled out of class once again. He pulls at the webbed skin between his fingers until his mom takes his hand in hers and he taps his fingers against her palm instead. There’s a spot on his knuckle where the skin has torn away, and it bleeds slowly. The counselor hands him a tissue and fixes him with that same soft gaze. He shifts in his seat. 

The adults speak of something called ADHD and learning disabilities, and he doesn’t know what they are, but his parents sound worried, and the world shifts considerably in that moment. 

Afterwards, he sees countless doctors—therapists, general practitioners, psychiatrists—all who try to explain what ADHD is and what it means for him. He doesn’t understand, but he knows that it has something to do with his fidgeting and his lack of focus, and suddenly he’s hyper-aware of the mannerisms he’s been accustomed to his entire life. 

It’s as he’s driving home from the pharmacy, with medication in his lap, that the weight of his parents’ eyes constantly looking at him in the car mirrors sinks in fully. He’s vulnerable and ashamed, like he’s been ripped from his cocoon only to realize his wings grew in differently than everyone else’s. 

He whispers. His parents barely hear him, but it seems very wrong to acknowledge this any louder. “I’m sorry.” 

When he’s eight, he hears his teacher talk about her husband to the other teacher who comes in to visit while her kids are on lunch. She says his name like spitting a sulfurous flavor off of her tongue. Later, she’ll regard him with that same tone—he was being a distraction again. There’s work to be done. He mutters his apologies and keeps his eyes on the ground.

Sometimes he thinks his sorrys, but keeps them to himself like a shameful secret. The acrid taste of embarrassment and anger as he pushes it out of his mind’s eye. His mother splits one of his pills, and he chokes it back, bitter and angry and resigned. He has nothing tangible to apologize to her for.

It starts to become something of a reflex. He becomes hyper-aware of when someone—especially his parents—gets one of those looks on their face. Everything, every word, every action, is a threat or disappointment. Everything is a mistake. When he gets distracted while his dad helps him with homework. When he breaks a pencil while staring out the window in school. When he forgets to fold his laundry for so long his clothes become wrinkled clumps of fabric that need to be ironed or washed again. 

When winter break comes, Sokka’s relieved. School is beginning to fill his stomach with dread, and he’s excited to spend three weeks coloring with Katara, helping his mother make akutaq, and eating his Gran Gran’s stew. There’s less opportunities for messing up, he thinks.

He’s wrong.

He goes ice fishing with his dad and Bato. He hasn’t caught any fish. He prefers watching Hakoda and Bato anyway. A fish approaches the hook, then scatters when Sokka loudly announces his presence. Dad and Bato laugh, hearty and jovial. Sokka scans their faces for underlying anger, analyzes the way their laughs ricochet off the air, listening for a flaw in the way it lands.

“We’ve got plenty,” Bato says, peering into the cooler where their previous catches lay in a raw, smelly heap. Sokka wipes his nose on the back of his glove. He lets go of the rim of the boat and sits on the center floor.

“It’s my fault, though,” he laments. “I’m sorry.” His dad shares a look with Bato, vaguely worried, extremely confused. His family says he has a tendency to overreact, to look for the worst in situations. Katara often teases him for the dramatic conclusions he jumps to, the worst-case-scenarios and endless barrage of what-ifs, but Sokka doesn’t think he’s overreacting. One day, he won’t think of these things, and that’ll be the time where it happens. He needs to be prepared, to brace himself for when his name changes meaning. When the rounded syllables of his moniker, plush and cozy, become bitter, and roll off of their tongues like a sentencing instead of a song.

“Well, I guess we’ll call that the one that got away,” Hakoda says, voice light in a purposeful way that signals his intent. His dad slings an arm around Sokka, holds him tight to his side and runs a hand over his hair. He wants to lighten the mood, but all it serves to do is make Sokka hate that he’s the one to weigh it down in the first place. 

The cycle begins again. 

He’s nine and a half, and his mother dies right after the new year, in their kitchen. Just the night before, they’d made Labrador tea to help tire out Sokka’s energy-bridled little body, and he and Katara begged her to let them eat some of the bannock she’d made earlier until she consented. Sokka had burnt his tongue on tea, never patient enough to let it cool, the numbness of his tongue doesn’t phase him anymore. 

Sokka prepares to fight back when the man breaks into their house—his dad isn’t home and it’s his duty as the man of the house—but his mom tells him to protect Katara and shoves them into the closet, where their coats tickle the top of his head and his wolftail gets caught on a zipper. He holds a hand over Katara’s mouth and hugs her to his chest, attempting to soothe her. He wants his dad or his Gran Gran. Anyone would be better at comforting her than he is right now. He smothers his own cries with a tight internal grip. 

His mother tries to stifle her screams, but he can hear them well enough to be smothered under their weight. He can’t breathe. Sokka swears he can feel crumbs of bannock clawing out of his throat, scraping the lining of his esophagus. He didn’t savor last night like he should’ve, they scold. 

When the police come and tell them their mother is gone, he thinks back to it and is overwhelmed by the remorseful pressure in his chest. Her final moments and the image of her children, of him, censored her. He knew from movies like Star Wars that final words, final expressions are important. A moment to express all your love and pain and memories. She never got hers. Because of him. He closes his eyes and focuses hard on getting his thoughts to reach the spirits who’ll save his message for her. _I’m sorry, Mommy._

They move in with his Gran Gran for a while. He and Katara share a room with two twin beds on opposite ends of the wall. The wallpaper is yellowing and old, but Sokka likes the way the tableside lamp’s glow softens on the patterns at night, making the normally ugly brown stains glow amber. He loves visiting his Gran Gran, but everything about this stay feels fundamentally wrong. The worn wallpaper is familiar enough to make the shadows across the room seem less like evil, foreboding spirits threatening his family, and more like old friends checking in on him and his sister. 

It’s rare that a night passes without one of them waking the other up. Most of the time, he ends up pressed against the wall with Katara curled up next to him. Whether it’s him who wakes up gasping for air, or Katara, both of them end up teary eyed and heartbroken. His apologies disappear into the night sky, heavy and plentiful. Apologies for Katara having to see their mother’s body; apologies that she’s plagued with nightmares; apologies that he splits her rare peaceful nights into pieces with his own blubbering. 

After the funeral, his dad breaks down. Sokka shuffles into the kitchen with a dry throat and eyes burning with tears from a nightmare he can barely remember, one that didn’t wake Katara for once. He comes down for water, but finds his father hunched over his Gran Gran’s kitchen table, shoulders quivering and breathing thick with snot and phlegm. Sokka pads over and holds him tight. He’s not used to adults crying. The situation presses deep into his shoulders. Sokka hugs his shaking father close. 

His mother’s killer never says sorry. The wound stands wide and gaping, a bottomless chasm churning with regret, anger, grief. Sokka takes it upon himself to fill the gaps the remorseless man in the courtroom leaves behind. His sorry’s don’t do much good. His father tells him he apologizes too much, that these things aren’t his fault, but Sokka keeps going, with the feverish desperation of a man gunning for parole. Eventually, he hopes, that pit might not be so desolate. After all, if he doesn’t, who will? 

“I’m sorry, Daddy.”

“Don’t apologize. It’s not your fault.” 

“Still, I am.” 

Katara goes to therapy after their mother’s death. On a surface level, Sokka is just glad that he’s not the only one, but he hates seeing his sister have to go to a therapist. In his mind, it’s become a symbol of his weakness. Katara isn’t weak like him. Her sitting next to him in the waiting room makes the world feel like it’s shifted an inch to the left. He thinks about those assignments they do in class. Something about this picture is wrong. Find what it is. The comparison is stupid. 

Eventually, guilt turns to jealousy as he sees Katara quickly open up and allow herself to be vulnerable. She trusts her doctor, she trusts him and their friends and Dad and Gran Gran, and she’ss comfortable talking about everything that’s happened. 

He hears his Hakoda talking to Bato and Gran Gran about how proud he is of her, how quickly she’s opened herself up to help, how much progress she’s made. Sokka is overwhelmed by how angry he gets when he hears that. He’s been in therapy, been trying to make this “progress” for years, and it doesn’t work for him. It highlights his inferiority. Katara has the luxury to open up. Sokka isn’t supposed to rely on anyone. He’s already failed them all enough. 

His dad and therapist sit with him in her office one morning. Sokka’s in an appointment instead of school, and he uses the time to color. His attention is solely on the drawing in front of him, answering his therapist's questions with short quips and grunts. When his therapist and his father realize he’s not going to take the initiative in answering, they close in.

They tell him they’re concerned. He doesn’t talk about things aside from the surface level; the journal his therapist bought him has a few lackluster scribbles and sentence fragments and nothing else; his progress with his ADHD has stagnated and repressed. Sokka doesn’t care, but he apologizes nevertheless. He doesn’t need to talk. He needs to be there for his family. There’s no time for journaling, or delving into his subconscious.

One day, he’s in a half-asleep haze on the couch, when his grandmother’s voice cuts through his tentative sleep. She and his dad had been murmuring in quiet voices for a long time; Sokka was glad to tune it out and use it as white noise to lull him asleep.

“He’s too young for all this,” his Gran Gran says in her warm, wizened voice. His dad murmurs his agreement, and both of their voices are saturated in concern. Sokka sits in the wake of what he’s overheard and ruminates on it, no longer tired. 

In the back of his head, he hears his mother’s voice, lilting and gentle. Nothing good comes from eavesdropping, Sokka. He begs to differ. He’s not a child. He’s not weak. He needs to do this. He needs to be there for his family. 

He starts refusing to go to therapy, face burning red and defiant, like a praying mantis gearing up to expose its bright patches, an empty threat to scare away a predator. Sokka’s animal coloration clearly isn’t very good, and it takes several weeks for his dad to agree to let him try things on his own, but eventually he concedes, and Sokka tries to ignore the worried look on his face, the concern he’s radiating. If Sokka is a praying mantis, his father is fully human––all empathy and concern and strength. Sokka braces himself, like getting ready to be crushed under Hakoda’s work boots lying abandoned by the front door. 

It’s fine. 

He’s going to prove them all wrong.

They leave Alaska in the spring. Gran Gran decided to come too, and even though it’s her choice, every time Sokka sees her he braces himself for her to yell at them for forcing her to her life-long home. The weight of that house is too heavy to live under, and the entire state is tainted and bloodstained. At night, Sokka swears the animals calling in the distance are screaming for help. 

Katara refuses to go inside to help pack, and after a while Sokka can’t take it either. 

They’re sitting in the front lawn on their last day when Yue pulls up on her bike. She drops it onto the pavement and it clatters with a metallic yelp as she runs over. Her boots scrape the concrete, and her snow white hair, unusually disheveled and slack, brushes against her wind-burnt cheeks as she pants in front of them. She looks like a beautiful old photograph, and Sokka blushes furiously, biting at his thumbnail until Katara makes him stop. 

Sokka’s bike is already in the moving van, so Yue takes his hand, and he offers to push her bicycle along with his free hand as they walk together to the corner store and buy Moon Pies. They sit on the curb in front of the shop and eat their sugary sweets together. Their shoulders press against each other, and heat permeates from Yue’s body to his. She always ran hot. Later in life, Sokka will look back on that as a bad omen of perpetual illness overlooked, but for now, he appreciates it and the way it thaws the frozen corners of his body, even just a little. 

“I’ll miss you.” Yue’s voice is dreamy and mellow, a quality that Sokka’s always appreciated. It makes his stomach do little flips and his head hum pleasantly.  
“I’ll miss you too.” He licks the streaks of chocolate off his fingers, and his breath thaws his fingers out a little. Even on the coldest days, Sokka always forgets his gloves. It got to the point where his mom would leave a note taped to the front door listing everything Sokka needed to remember each day and never did. He’s already forgetting again. “I’m sorry I’m leaving.” Yue smiles, takes the wrapper from his hands, folds them into her coat pocket to throw away later.

“Don’t be silly. It’s not your fault. I understand, Sokka.” She wraps a gloved hand around his and turns her body towards his, knees pressed against his. The wind blows her braid about, and a few of the loose strands brush against his face.

“Your hair reminds me of moonlight,” he says, voice stupid and awkward. Spirits, why did he say that? Yue just giggles and blushes. There are faint freckles on the bridge of her nose (he has freckles some too, but he never paid them much attention, or even really noticed them, until Yue told them she liked them). Even her eyelashes are white—delicate, snowflake stems reaching from liquid blue eyes. 

Sokka almost asks Yue to live with him in the woods behind the gas station—Alaska frightens him these days, but somehow leaving scares him more. He allows his mind to drift and imagines camping in the trees and only coming out to buy Moon Pies and look for change on the sidewalks, but eventually the time still comes where they both have to get home. 

They hold each other close, and one of his mean teenage neighbors, with blond hair and small, heated brown eyes, wolf whistles as he pulls up to fill his truck with gas, but Sokka ignores him in favor of focusing on Yue’s slow, steady breath against his ear. 

“Be sure to write and call me all the time,” she requests, in her noble, refined manner of speech. Sokka loves how she sounds when she talks—it’s so different from his own scattered ramblings and sarcastic quips. “I’m going to tell you everything. And someday I’ll come visit and we’ll do _activities_ together.” He grimaces at the reminder of their first meeting, but pushes it away. He doesn’t want that apologetic embarrassment to ruin these last moments.  
When they let go of each other, Yue hesitates, then plants a quick kiss on his mouth. Her lips are soft and balmy, and Sokka is suddenly painfully aware of how perpetually chapped his are. They’re both blushing. Yue ducks her head as she picks up her bike off the sidewalk and pushes off in the opposite direction. She and Sokka yell goodbyes back and forth until Yue’s voice is a distant echo down the street, and eventually her figure is swallowed by the horizon. 

That night, as their car speeds down the highway. Katara snores beside him and his dad is quiet in the driver’s seat, and Sokka, tired out and unable to sleep, turns his eyes to the sky. He looks up at the moon, full and bright against the inky canvas of the night sky, and thinks of Yue, pulling at one of the pieces of dead skin on the edge of his lip until it comes off and Sokka tastes a slight twinge of copper. He already regrets leaving her behind. 

They come to their new school late in the year, but Katara is welcomed into the fold of things instantly. Sokka keeps his guard up. He has a hard time trusting anyone these days. 

Katara makes friends with people like Aang and Toph, and even most of the people she’s not close with she still gets along with. Sokka befriends only Suki, and almost messes up the beginning of their relationship too. Suki and Katara bond instantly, especially once Katara finds out Suki got him to admit that maybe girls _can_ be better at things like the monkey bars than guys. 

He spends his afternoons reading and drawing and doing homework, and it isn’t until the end of the school year that reluctantly opens himself up to Katara’s new friends––his friends too, he supposes. Aang is so nice it’s tooth rotting, Toph parries his jokes and sarcasm, and it quickly begins to feel like second nature, Suki is a glue that holds them all together. He lets them into his ideas and his humor, and is pleasantly surprised when it doesn’t immediately backfire.  
They’re all at the park when he’s overwhelmed by how _wrong_ he was. It’s a sweltering July day, and Sokka isn’t used to being so hot, even in the summer. He wipes sweat from his brow and grins as everyone laughs at one of his jokes. The guilt lines his smile, and his eyes sting. It’s just the sweat, of _course_ , but Sokka looks at his new friends and chokes back his words. _I was so wrong about you guys. I’m sorry._

Their father becomes increasingly absent as the years fold into middle school, and Sokka understands. He does. But he also worries a lot. While his father disappears on his hunting trips with Bato, who moved down a couple years prior, Sokka has to play adult for Katara and their gran (they both hate to be taken care of, but it has to happen, he reasons). The fact of the matter is that the children and the elderly come first. He’s always been raised that way. Sokka knows that without his dad as a buffer, he no longer gets to play the kid card. He’s the adult in the situation, the least vulnerable. 

He understands. But a part of him still hates Hakoda for leaving them. And a bigger part of him is overwhelmed with guilt for resenting him. He shoves down his anger and replaces it with work. Anything to fill the hours. Sometimes, he has to take three or four Ritalin to get through it all, even though it makes his stomach burn uncomfortably. His doctors had considered having him take three before, and four isn’t that much of a stretch. His parents wouldn’t want him doing that, but neither of them are here, are they?

Hakoda never leaves without giving them money for food, and his Gran has her own money to spend and add to the budget, but they’ve never been rich. Sokka picks up odd jobs around the neighborhood when his father is gone, and even then he isn’t always able to stretch the money in the right way to cover everything. He skimps out a lot on his meals these days. He doesn’t mind. Sometimes Katara, or Gran Gran, or any of his other friends need more, and Sokka’s happy to provide. When it comes down to him or his loved ones, he doesn’t matter. 

He learns to operate through the static that builds up in his head on days where he combines little food with extra medication, until eventually he’s a master and keeps his pent-up energy on hold until he’s alone in his room at night. Sure, sometimes he snaps at people a little too quick, or is a little too sarcastic, but assholes like his classmate Zuko deserve it anyway. 

Sokka goes to all of Katara’s meets and performances, even the ones his dad is there to see. She needs a constant in her life. Every time their father leaves, the weight on her shoulders seems a little heavier. A cloud hangs over the entire house. Sokka hates it more than anything. So he goes to her events, and he teases her for her cooking, and he helps her with her homework, and he makes jokes and sarcastic quips to lighten the mood. He doesn’t think he’s helping much, but Katara always thanks him for coming to her meets, or lets him take the first serving of whatever dinner she’s made (he never takes too much, leaves a window for her to fill her needs first), and at moments like that he’s able to entertain the idea that he isn’t fucking things up too much. 

It’s November when his dad extends one of his trips. He never leaves around the anniversary, Sokka will give him that, but sometimes push comes to shove and that means the times before and after are doomed to be long and desolate, especially on nights where Gran Gran doesn’t come over from her condo, and it’s just him and Katara. He loves his sister, but those nights feel particularly empty, like every breath echoes off the walls of their hollow house and highlights how wrong everything is these days. 

His Gran is out with her boyfriend Pakku (which Sokka thinks is weird; he likes Pakku, but he’s always felt like adults just got married, never dated) and Katara goes to Toph’s to work on a project. Sokka is fully planning to spend his entire afternoon doing homework and running errands––there’s groceries to be bought, neighbors’ gutters to be cleaned, piled up dishes to be done––but Suki invites him to go skating and won’t take no for an answer, and he reluctantly leaves his schedule behind. 

They take a break to sit on the park bench, the wood warped and old, muscles aching from hours of trying and failing to do complex tricks and conquer the slopes they’ve never managed to successfully skate. Sokka rolls his pant legs up to his thighs to assess the damage, and his knees are mottled purple and blue. He pokes at the marks, relishes in the slight twinging. He should get knee-pads and wrist-guards like Suki has, but it’s not a necessity. Sokka calculated his non-essentials out of the equations in his head months ago. 

Suki’s been pestering him to tell her what’s wrong, because apparently Sokka’s not as good at hiding his frustrations as he thinks. After hours of him refusing to talk about anything more than school, the gang, and girls, she takes a different tactic. 

“Do you wanna go to the library sometime?” Sokka glances at her from under his half-lidded eyes, view obscured by dark lashes. Suki’s not watching him, peeling her wrist-guards off and wiping the sweat off her pale skin and onto her jeans. Sokka thinks she’s beautiful. Beautiful, but confusing. 

“You literally hate reading.” Suki is an extremely tactile person, beaten only by Toph. She’s always drudged through the required readings for school, dragged her feet through the writings and passages, which she deems as menial and boring. It isn’t that Suki isn’t smart––sometimes Sokka thought she was a genius––she just didn’t enjoy sitting and doing that stuff like she did the hands on activities, the gym class and the science experiments and the projects. Sometimes they’d joke that maybe she was the one with ADHD. 

Sokka eyes her suspiciously, like he’s going to have to gauge some covert meaning Suki’s hidden away. But she doesn’t hide anything. Sokka should know that by now. She shrugs, takes a huge gulp of her water. The ice clings against it’s metallic side, and Sokka’s ears perk up at the sound. He forgot his water, and he always feels bad taking Suki’s, but he lets her hand it to him all the same. 

“Yeah, but you like it,” she says, like it’s so simple. Maybe it is. Regardless, Sokka will never understand why people would sacrifice their time and energy on him, especially to do something they don’t even enjoy. 

“My dad’s not coming back when he said he would. He pushed it back,” he finally tells her after a few moments of silence. This is what she’s really getting at. Their feet are resting on their boards; Sokka rolls his side to side, listens to the wheels scrape the concrete, catch the lip of the sidewalk and jolt. Across the park, someone hits the peak of the halfpipe, and the sound is sharp and visceral. It makes him flinch. He doesn’t know why. 

“I’m sorry he keeps doing this to you guys,” she says. Suki’s voice is somehow both gentle and strong. He loves that about her. She’s strong, caring. A constant in his life. He appreciates her. She sounds concerned, and when Sokka glances at her, her wide blue eyes are boring into his soul. He shrugs. 

“It’s whatever. I’m more worried about Katara. She needs him, and I’m sorry he doesn’t seem to realize that. Or maybe he does and he just doesn’t care. I don’t know.” 

“Sokka, he’s your dad too.” Sokka sighs. His muscles are aching and the lower the sun sinks in the sky, the more he wants to take advantage of this night to himself to collapse into his bed and sleep until he has to wake up for school tomorrow. He wishes he’d taken a third Ritalin before leaving, or brought them with him just in case. His foot slips as he slides his board to his right, and it skitters out from under his legs and towards the dying sunset lingering on the chest of the horizon. He stands up to follow it, limbs wobbly and knees popping like he’s a thousand years old.

“It doesn’t matter.”

Word of Yue’s death reaches him quickly, and through his grief-filled haze, all Sokka can think is that he’s glad his dad is actually home when it happens, because he can’t fucking take all of this. 

When his dad sits him and Katara down to tell them what happened, she cries. Hakoda wraps her up in his arms, and opens the embrace up for Sokka. He enters it slowly, rigidly, eyes wide and fixated on a random spot on his dad’s shirt. Eventually they let go, and Sokka rejects his dad’s offer to order food, running to his room and slamming the door shut. 

He sits on the edge of his bed, a stranger in his own room, and opens up his phone. He hadn’t texted with Yue in a month. Hadn’t called her in even longer. He hovers over their chat log and stares at their last messages in a trance. She hadn’t told him anything. Why would she though, when he never bothered to pick up the phone? 

Sokka refuses to leave his room for the rest of the night, and when he eventually falls asleep, he doesn’t wake up until it’s past noon and his dad is knocking on his door. He almost panics––he’s supposed to be in school right now––but Yue is dead, and missing school seems trivial in comparison.  
Hakoda sits on the edge of his bed and lays a hand on his shoulder. Sokka curls further into his pillows, back to the world and eyes trained on the wall, dry and desiccated. 

“Hey, bud. Your gran came by with stew. You should try and eat something.” His dad sounds tired and quiet, and his voice has a lilt to it that makes it seem like he’s ready to swaddle Sokka up at any moment. Sokka can barely get a noise out, only managing a pathetic whimper as he squeezes his eyes shut. “Sokka, look at me. _Look_ at me.” There’s no anger in his voice, just concern and care. When Sokka stays in his defensive ball on his side, Hakoda sighs and shifts so he’s sitting beside him, back against the wall, leg a warm weight against the line of his back, arched and tight like the brim of a headstone. “I know it’s hard, bud, but you need to eat. Even just a little.” He runs his hands through his hair, all-encompassing. His mother’s hands through his hair were delicate, thin fingers sliding the strands away from his face. His father’s is like a glove over his skin, gathering heat in the pockets under his knuckles and transferring it over to him. Both are––were––comforting in their own way. 

“I’ve been such a shitty friend,” he chokes out, tears barely managing to slip through his clenched eyelids, sliding down his quivering cheeks in hot rivulets. “I barely spoke to her anymore. I didn’t even know she was sick again. I’m such an asshole.” Sokka imagines Yue dying alone in the hospital, waiting for him to hold her hand and bring her a Moon Pie. The logical half of his brain knows that she probably wasn’t alone, but he can’t get the image of it out of his mind. She didn’t expect anything from him, and he still let her down. 

“No, Sokka, no,” Hakoda soothes, voice laden with compassion and heartbreak. “Don’t say that. It’s been years, people lose contact. I know Yue knew how much you cared about her.” Finally, Sokka turns to face him, and drops his head in his lap, buries his face into the fabric of his dad’s sweatpants, quickly turning tearstained and wet underneath him.

His dad whispers in his ear, soothes him and lets him cry himself out. Sokka can hear Katara and Gran Gran moving around the kitchen across the house, dishes clattering and no words being spoken. He wonders if they can hear him in here. If they can hear him whimpering and sobbing. He doesn’t know how long he and Hakoda sit like that. It feels like a long time. He thinks about the moon, somewhere in the sky, swallowed up by the sunlight and watching over them like a specter. _I’m sorry_ , he tells it. It doesn’t answer. 

He’s in high school now and he thinks that things are looking up. After Yue, his dad had realized how much his kids needed him, had turned long, frequent trips away with Bato into a weekend every few months. He and Suki start dating in their freshman year. He takes a ton of AP classes, and finds the first semester to be easy. He’s getting back on his feet, getting used to the wind beneath his sails and turning into that smart, capable young man that his parents always assured him he’d be. 

Sokka expects smooth sailing from here, but in the age-old turn of events, things get worse before they get better. He’s a fool for ever thinking differently.  
He returns from winter break and finds that his newfound focus got thrown away with all the rotting Christmas trees on the side of the road. His grades dip, and he barely has time for Suki or taking advantage of his dad being home. He has to quit his clubs to get all the work done, not that he’s really that interested in robotics or poetry that much anymore. He has piles of books, ideas, and half-finished writings all over his room, collecting dust. He can’t remember the last time he had motivation for the things he cared about. It’s fine. School comes first. His parents had always said that. 

Even without those added distractions, he isn’t able to keep it all up. He and Suki break up, deciding they were always better as friends. It's mutual. Actually mutual, not mutual in the way people say just to make themselves feel better, but in his twisting, turmoiled thoughts, he adds, _I was never who you needed me to be, anyway._ He avoids her, and in turn their friend group for a while––or until Katara and Aang drag him out with them and force him to realize he was being a dumbass. Things are okay enough. They fall back into friendship quickly.

Still, it follows him every time he sees her. _I’m sorry, I’m sorry._

At first, it’s another thing that makes him drown in guilt and shame. Before long, it’s more of an outlet than a vice. He’d read about bloodletting once: the surgical removal of one’s blood for therapeutic purposes, things like too much iron. Sokka figures this is somewhere in the same vein, no pun intended.  
Sure, sometimes it catches up to him and he goes a little too far, has to scramble to stop the blood and leaves his bedroom looking vaguely like a crime scene, (somewhere in the back of his mind, he sees his mother in the kitchen. He presses the blade into his arm with extra force, and tries to let the image roll off of his body and into the sink with the rest of his troubles) but he mostly has it under control. He deserves it. It’s a fair trade. 

Sokka has completely stopped questioning it up until the night Katara catches him. He’s a little too fervent in his session, angry about slipping grades on his interim and sleeping too much when there’s work to be done and waking up to his dad’s worried eyes, and he forgets to lock the door. 

“Sokka? Why are you still––” Katara freezes in his doorway, and Sokka pauses like a man caught committing a crime. In some fashion, he is. “What happened?” She’s a tidal wave rushing into his room, and water pours down Sokka’s throat. He can’t speak. He stammers stupidly while she approaches, and can’t even react when she takes the blade, removed from the pack of razors his dad just bought him, from his hands, throwing it to the desk, where it skids across the wood and leaves a dark red smear across it. She overcalculates her throw, and the blade tumbles off the edge of the desk and falls behind it somewhere, lost to the dust and the scraps of paper Sokka never bothers to clean. 

“You can’t tell Dad,” he bursts, his first coherent thought since the door opened, probably even before then. “I just–I don’t–you can’t tell him.” Katara’s blue eyes are wide and scared, and it seems to Sokka that she doesn’t even blink, just looks between him and his blood-soaked arm in disbelief. 

She reaches out for his shoulder and tugs towards the door, instructing, “C’mon.” Sokka digs his heels into the floor and tenses his already-tight muscles. She softens. “I’m not taking you to Dad, just the bathroom. We need to take care of these.” 

He allows himself to be pulled into the bathroom and sat on the closed toilet seat. Katara bustles around, closes the door and readys a washcloth and the first aid kid from the linen closet. The washcloth is a pale green.

“Use one of the dark ones. It cleans easier.” His own voice sounds foreign to him, devoid of emotion and utterly resigned. Katara purses her lips and fixes him with a long, dismayed gaze, but still puts the washcloth back and takes out a navy one, running it under cool water from the sink. She perches on the edge of the bathtub taking his arm in her hands. She tries to keep herself calm, in the way of medical professionals and mothers, but Sokka knows her too well and she isn’t able to stop the deep inhale of breath as she dabs away the fresh blood and sees the old scars underneath. 

She talks as she cleans and wraps the cuts, asking him if he’s okay, asking what’s wrong, what happened. “Sokka, _please_ , you can talk to me.” He shakes his head, tries to ignore the tears welling in his eyes. “I won’t even tell Dad, if you just talk to me.” She’s begging, and Sokka feels terrible watching it. He caused this. He won’t forget it. 

“Katara, I–” he starts and stops. His brain doesn’t seem to work when he needs it to most. It’s a piece of shit. Sokka wishes he could send it back to the shop for repair, or better yet, replacement. His parents should have thrown him out when they got him. “I can’t–I don’t know what to say. Do we have to talk about it tonight? I’m tired.” She stares at him silently, and he’s unnerved as he stares back. 

“Tomorrow. We _will_ talk about it tomorrow.”

“Yeah, fine.” Sokka rubs his hands over his head. His hair is loose and tangled, and his finger gets caught on a knot at the crown of his skull. “But promise me you won’t tell Dad.” Katara doesn’t miss a beat.

“Only if you promise that any time you even _think_ about hurting yourself again you come to me.” 

“Okay, sure. I promise.” Katara looks reluctant to accept his words at face value, but she nods slowly and goes to put the first aid kit away, then leads Sokka to his room as though taking a toddler to bed, gripping his hand in hers and glancing over her shoulder every few seconds as though worried he’d somehow detached himself from his arm and slipped away. 

As he pulls back his covers from their lame, disheveled attempt at being made that morning, Katara digs behind his desk for the blade, and when she finally gets it, disappears into the bathroom. Sokka climbs into bed, he doesn’t bother to turn off the light. He knows his sister and she’ll be back. Down the hall, he hears the toilet flush. 

When Katara returns, she closes the door behind her and turns the light off, padding over to his bed and motioning with her hand. “Scoot over.” 

“I don’t need my little sister to babysit me.” Even as he says it, though he’s already sliding over to the wall, leaving a gap in the blankets for his sister to snuggle into. 

“I don’t care, I’m going to.” She pulls the covers over herself and for a moment they lie on their sides, staring at each other’s faces in the night. Katara’s face is full and comforting. He imagines his own is probably gaunt and wraithlike, especially under the long shadows draping across his bedroom. “I care about you, Sokka. I mean it. I don’t want to lose you.” 

There’s clear worry in her visage. He caused this, and he hates it. 

“I’m sorry.” It’s clear that Katara thinks he’s apologizing for tonight––for hurting himself, for scaring her, for putting this burden of knowledge on her. He is. He’s also apologizing for lying. 

Sometimes, Sokka drafts notes, or begins to, at least. The first words are always _I’m sorry_ , even when he tries to get out his reasons first––while the hurt is freshest––the guilt lines his being and pours out his fingertips without him even realizing it. 

He typically gets about halfway through when he gives up and crumbles them into small, shameful balls that he’ll bury in the bottom of his trash bin where no one will find them. He never knows what to say. He was never as good at writing as he used to think he was. 

Zuko switches into their school about a week into the winter semester, and when Sokka first sees him in the hallway, he freezes. They went to middle school together and all he remembers about Zuko, other than the scar that’s permanently seared into Sokka’s mind (and the fact that he used to think he was pretty, though Sokka chooses not to remember this), is that he was a dick. That he’d make snide remarks to all of Sokka’s friends, and would sit back and watch while Azula tore people to shreds, and that he even hit Aang once, just for trying to be his friend. 

Zuko notices him a moment later, and his eyes light up in recognition. Even from across the hallway, filled with people pressed up against each other and shoving him aside, Sokka can pick up on the slight upward twitch of his brow bone, the nearly imperceptible widening of his eyes. 

He starts towards Sokka, looking like he’s planning what to say the entire way over, but when he lands at Sokka’s feet, all he does is stare back into Sokka’s unblinking eyes. They’re dry and starting to ache with the air pressing against them, but Sokka doesn’t trust what will happen if he looks away. 

“Sokka…” Zuko’s voice is hoarser than it was back in middle school. He gets jostled by someone running by from his left, and jumps about a foot into the air. Sokka vaguely remembers that whatever burned him left him with damage to the side; he assumed, at least, after he put together the pieces. Zuko asking to sit at the front, Zuko asking the teacher to repeat themself, Zuko snapping at anyone who got a little too close to his left side. 

Still, his jolt is enough to send Sokka into action, spinning on his heel and rushing off to a class that’s probably already about to start. He feels like a dick, because Zuko really looked freaked out, but he’d always been an asshole, for as long as Sokka had had the displeasure of knowing him. Sokka repeats it to himself to rationalize leaving him alone in the near-empty hallway.

The world hates him, because it turns out, Zuko’s not a dick. Or at least, not as much as the caricature Sokka had painted of him in his memories.  
He comes to lunch late a few days later and finds Zuko sitting at his table with the rest of their friends. Aang announces that Zuko had apologized to him, to everyone, for all the things he did. Zuko apologizes to him then too, Aang looking excited and proud the entire time. Sokka’s sure he is. Aang had confided in him years ago that he felt like Zuko could be their friend if he had a little guidance. Sokka had scoffed at the idea, naturally, but once again, he turned out to be wrong. Sometimes he fucking hates Aang and his stupidly-accurate wisdom and compassion. Soul-crushing guilt aside, he thinks it’d be so much easier if his friends could all agree to be assholes every once in a while.

He finds comfort in the fact that Katara is even more wary than him, but eventually they all open up to his presence. Zuko somehow even becomes someone Sokka might consider his best friend, and he’s left to beat himself up over all the harsh judgements he’d spewed about Zuko in the past, especially as the details of his “rich and elite” life unfolds. 

Zuko tells them all little things here and there––sometimes only after some friendly pushing and prodding, other times on his own accord, when he feels safe and unjudged. His dad had kicked him out for talking out of turn. He’d hopped around with his Uncle Iroh for a few months, until Ozai took him back. That apparently didn’t last long and had ended in his uncle helping him file a restraining order against his father and taking permanent custody of him. He’d done online schooling for a few years, and only now felt brave enough to come back into the schooling system, avoiding his sisters’ private school, the one that could’ve been his in another timeline, like the plague. 

Sometimes, when they’re spending the night in each other’s rooms, Zuko tells him other things that he doesn’t really want to tell the others, not for lack of trust towards them, but rather an abundance of trust towards Sokka. (An excess, he’d even argue. Trusting Sokka gets people in trouble or killed; he’ll never understand why Zuko isn’t more wary.) They always share the bed, whether it’s Zuko’s neatly made full size mattress or Sokka's tiny twin tucked into the corner of his messy bedroom, even though his dad offers to get out the air mattress every time Zuko comes over. Zuko always sleeps against the wall, with his left ear pressed into the pillow. He never even rolls over to the other side in his sleep, which baffles Sokka, who will twist and turn until the blankets are coiled up in his legs, and he’s kicked Zuko in the shin a million times. Sokka hates sleeping on his left side, but he knows Zuko likes being able to see what everyone’s doing, so he forces himself to do so until it becomes normal (maybe a part of him also likes being able to look at Zuko’s face under the amber, firefly-glow of the streetlights streaming through the thin cotton curtains, but he’ll never tell). 

They’re listening to Crywank (because they both have the most depressing taste in music ever) and pretending that they’re trying to fall asleep when Zuko tells him about how he got his scar, and Sokka is filled with the most rage he’s felt since he had to face his mother’s killer in the courtroom, and had to fight both the urge to lunge over the table and strangle the man, and the urge to break down and start sobbing.

Zuko looks uncomfortable, and he grimaces going over some of the more gruesome details, and Sokka tries to keep his facial expression schooled to express his concern without being overbearing. He’d hate for Zuko to shut down now, when he’s finally feeling comfortable enough to open up about one of his most well-guarded, traumatic secrets. 

“Maybe it’s vain,” Zuko mutters, “but sometimes the thing I wish for most is just to look normal again. I don’t even really wish my dad hadn’t kicked me out and hurt me anymore. I’m much happier with my uncle, and with you guys. I just want to look normal. Some twisted priorities, huh?”

“No, I get it. It’s not vain, I think that’s normal.” Sokka thinks of the raised white lines across his wrists, and how even though _he_ does it to _himself_ , he always wishes he didn’t have to see the aftermath. He gets it. More than Zuko probably thinks. They stare at each other in the dark, and Sokka traces every inch of Zuko’s face with his eyes, memorizes how every soft curve and sharp angle looks in the long shadows and the gentle streetlight. He’s unable to stop himself from continuing, “For what it’s worth, I think you’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen.”

He expects Zuko to recoil––to punch him, call him a slur, and leave immediately, drive away under Yue’s moonlight and leave him alone with the silver light stamping across every inch of his inferiority, but Zuko continues to stare into Sokka’s eyes, long dark lashes fluttering open and closed. 

“Really?”

“I think you’re perfect.” Hesitantly, Sokka reaches a hand up and traces Zuko’s right cheek with his thumb, and gingerly presses a kiss onto the raised skin of his left cheek. Zuko takes a slightly sharp intake of breath, but when Sokka pulls away, he takes him by the chin and presses their lips together. Zuko’s breath is warm against his face, and his lips are firm in a way that Yue’s and Suki’s never were.

“I think _you’re_ perfect,” Zuko breathes. Sokka is far from perfect, if the half-finished suicide notes stuffed in his trash-can, the perpetual disorganization of his bedroom, and his inability to function properly have any say in it. For a moment, he thinks maybe he could tell Zuko about these things. He’s sure he’d be receptive, but when Sokka imagines having to lay the details of his thoughts out for _anyone_ , let alone the kind, troubled boy in front of him, he can’t bring himself to do it. Zuko doesn’t need to hear it. There’s more pressing matters.

They fall asleep in each other’s arms, and in that moment Sokka can’t figure out if he’s extraordinarily big or impossibly small. 

Neither of them feel comfortable coming out, let alone exposing their relationship, for quite some time. They find time to hang out alone, hold hands under tables when they’re being particularly bold, and spend way too much time staring at each other––or Sokka worries _he’s_ spending too much time staring at Zuko. He’s fairly certain Zuko looks at him just as frequently, but it’s never too much. Every time Sokka catches amber eyes looking in his direction, his heart flutters and he feels special like he hasn’t in ages, maybe never has. 

If anyone notices the changes in their relationship, they say nothing, and Sokka’s grateful for that. There was a time he’d never imagined coming out even to himself, and the idea of being forced into talking about it scares him more than he’d care to admit. It’s not even like he expects anyone to react poorly. Suki had come out as bisexual years before, his father was had started dating Bato a couple months ago, all without any negative repercussions. Hell, Aang regularly attended GSA meetings and talked about how the monks he was raised with always taught him that love of all forms is beautiful. 

Still, he isn’t ready. So he and Zuko spend the next four months in a strange state of limbo, somehow in the mood to scream their admiration for one another from the rooftops while being too timid about it all to tell anyone besides each other. 

None of it seems quite real. Sokka finds that most days he feels the urge to see Zuko and run in the other direction. He’s never been able to expose himself, open himself up to vulnerability, no matter how much he trusts someone, and the more Zuko’s life, trauma, and growth unfold in front of him, the more he starts to lie awake at night and wonder if it’s at all fair. Is it really fair of him to get in a relationship with someone who’s had so much toxicity in his life, when Sokka’s fairly certain he’s just as bad, even if in different ways? Is it fair to risk stunting Zuko’s recovery and healing by bringing his own, lesser struggles into the mix? If he thinks about them too hard, entertains them too much, they’ll consume him, and eventually everyone he cares about too. He already holds everyone back. He knows this— _has_ known this since he watched his parents’ faces as they filled his first prescription. 

Somehow, he doesn’t blow up the relationship like he has all his others, and he and Zuko decide to come out together. It’s Zuko’s birthday, and the Jasmine Dragon has closed early for a celebration (Zuko tells him he feels bad about his uncle losing out on business for him. Sokka assures him that the shop will be fine. Iroh wouldn’t close if he didn’t want to, or wasn’t able to). Zuko’s never been one for crowds, so the only people who are there are the people who they’d eventually have to tell anyway. If there was anyone extra, they’d probably both chicken out. 

They tell everyone that they’re dating over cake. Zuko does most of the talking, save from a few questions directed specifically at him (like no, he’s not gay, he’s bisexual; and yes, his relationship with Suki had been real). Sokka’s never been good at public speaking. Though this isn’t really public speaking, and that’s just an excuse he tells himself to lessen the guilt of leaving Zuko out to dry. He pokes his fork into the cake. It’s vanilla with matcha frosting. Somehow both sickly sweet and exceedingly bitter. Sokka hates matcha, but he’ll pretend to like it if it makes Zuko happy. Still, he’s only taken one bite, and it sits in the back of his throat like a stone, and his stomach is rolling. 

“I’m proud of you, both of you,” Hakoda says, smiling from across the table. Sokka barely glances up, quickly diverting his attention back to his cake. In his peripheral vision, he can see Iroh hugging Zuko. Everyone is talking around them, and it sounds like an uproar to Sokka, even though it’s probably little more than a slight rumble across the tea shop. He jabs his fork into the fluffy side and it comes back covered in cream-colored crumbs and yellowy-green streaks of frosting. Sokka could puke in this moment. There doesn’t even seem to be a reason why. Hakoda leans forward and reaches towards him, laying a hand on top of his. “I mean it.” 

He doesn’t realize Aang’s asking him a question until Zuko nudges his side. Sokka starts, making a dumb, confused noise in the back of his throat, gaze flickering between Aang’s wide gray eyes and the table. He’s always been awful at eye contact. 

“Sorry, what?” At the other end of the table, Toph’s fork scrapes the ceramic edge of the plate. Sokka doesn’t know where to look or listen or speak. The world seems so bright that it’s glaring and makes everything around him fluorescent and grainy. 

“I asked when you realized you were bi. Like, did you start to figure it out because of Zuko?” Aang is asking kindly, without a hint of judgement or accusation, but the hair on Sokka’s neck prickles anyway. It would make sense that he’d only just realized he was into guys; he’d purposefully tried to avoid giving any inkling that he did until this very moment. Admitting how long he’s known feels like telling his friends and family he doesn’t trust them. 

“I’ve kind of known for a long time,” he admits, shoulders tight and jaw tight. He can’t remember the last time he didn’t have to consciously remind himself to unclench his jaw. “I’m sorry I didn’t say anything sooner. I should have.” 

Katara jumps in then. Sokka hadn’t even realized she’d been listening. “No, you shouldn’t have. You do these things in your own time, Sokka. For yourself, not for anyone else.” Katara’s voice always sounds maternal. His mind if full of images of Kya, and he wonders how she’d feel if she was here to find out her son was queer. Would she be as accepting of him as everyone here seems to be? He thinks maybe he’ll ask his dad later— _would Mom still love me if she knew I was bisexual?_ —but then he imagines his Hakoda’s face scrunching up, the anger that he’d even consider that his mother could ever be anything less than accepting and beautiful, and decides against it.

“Besides,” Toph cuts in, tone teasing and cheerfully brash and entirely her, “it’s not like you even needed to tell us. There was no way in hell you were straight.” Everyone laughs, even Sokka. He doesn’t know if she genuinely knew before they said anything or if she’s just screwing with him, but it wouldn’t surprise him if he wasn’t as good as hiding it as he thought. 

Still, that night while he’s lying in bed, staring at the ceiling and missing the heat and comfort of Zuko beside him, of their limbs tangled together, his mind jumps to Yue. His first ever crush. How would she feel knowing he was dating a guy? In love with a guy, in the same way he had been in love with her when they were kids (the way you love someone when you’re that young is very different, Sokka knows, yet the roots of the two situations are irrevocably entwined). There’s every chance she’d feel betrayed.

They’d been certain they were destined for each other, like their parents’ were destined for each other. They’d crawl under the playground equipment together, or go sit in the woods and talk about their lives together. They were going to get married. Really, it was just kid talk, but that’s the picture of Yue that’s lived in his mind for his entire life––her under the dappled, cold Alaskan light, holding Sokka’s hand and fantasizing about all the adventures they’d have when they were grown. The places they’d see and the things they’d do when they were old enough to exist on their own. Maybe it’s stupid, but to Sokka it’s important. 

He rolls out of bed and over to the window, where he grips the windowsill and cranes his neck to find the moon in the night sky. His breath fogs the glass, and leaves a smudge at its razor-edge crescent tongue. He swears Yue’s silhouette is there in its visage, and hopes he hasn’t disappointed her. 

“Fuck, I’m sorry, Yue,” he whispers against the cool glass. What is he even apologizing for these days? Sokka’s lost track. 

Sokka sleeps way too much. He knows this; the idea is fortified every time he wakes up plastered to his sheets, forced to face the setting sun pressed against his window. His evenings are nothing but too many blankets piled on top of him and stagnated air trapped behind his shut door. Half the time, when he wakes up to the sunset and skin that is somehow both too big and too small, he kicks off the extra blankets, rolls over and falls back asleep. He sleeps through dinner most nights, only dragging himself out of bed when his dad or Katara forces him to come eat. 

Hakoda calls him down one night when the sky is a watercolor painting of deep indigo and a ghost-of-the-sunlight-mauve, and the smell of dinner still lingers in the air. The spices are thick and coat every inch of Sokka’s body. He sits across from his dad at the kitchen table, drags a hand across his face, and tries to rid the slumber from his brain.

“Sokka, are you doing okay, bud?” Hakoda asks, hands laid on the table and eyebrows arched in concern. He knew it was coming, but Sokka still feels a spark of annoyance at the question. Not trusting his tongue, he simply nods, barely sparing a grunt in his dad’s direction. He looks everywhere but at him––at his dad’s firm hands, his own fingers tapping the wood, at the water stains on their ceiling that they never got around to painting over, out the window at the trees swaying in the wind. Sokka can almost taste the cool breeze against his skin in the humid air. Goosebumps prickle along his arms.

“You sure? Your sister and I are getting really worried.”

“Yeah.” Sokka tries to keep his voice nonchalant, pretending he doesn’t notice how thick and taut his vocal cords feel as he speaks. “I’m doing fine. Great, even. You guys are worried about nothing.” Sometimes when he feels like he’s backed into a corner, Sokka rambles. Oftentimes he ends up putting his foot in his mouth. He tries his hardest not to do this today.

“I’m not so sure about that, bud,” Hakoda says, pushing forward and continuing when Sokka moves to defend himself. “You’re sleeping a lot, you’re not going out with Katara and your friends as much, your grades are falling. You’re not acting like yourself, Sokka.” 

“How would you even know what ‘acting like myself’ is? You were never even around.” Sokka glares at his hands. There’s no real discernable reason for the simmering in the pit of his stomach, no reason for him to be tearing into his dad like this. He’d been making a conscious effort to be around more, but they never really talked about those times either. Is Sokka just supposed to pretend it never happened? It’s typical, he guesses.

“Sokka,” his father says sternly, though he doesn’t look too angry. Sokka barely spares him a second look. “I don’t know what’s going on, but you need to calm down so you don’t say things you regret. I’m sorry that I haven’t been there before, but I’m trying now, and I can’t if you don’t _talk_ to me.”  
“We’ve never talked about that stuff before. Why start now?” Sokka picks at the skin around his fingernails, quickly becoming red and inflamed. A strand of hair falls in front of his eyes. He reaches for a hair tie that he doesn’t have and then opts to rip at his scalp, harshly pulling the hair back and behind his ears. The skin of his head protests the jerky movement, and as though to spite him, the hair falls right back into his face once again. Sokka rips his hair back, then quickly stands from his chair, spinning to face the window with a hand clamped over his mouth. So much for not putting his foot in his mouth.  
Hakoda appears at his side, a warm hand laying on his shoulder. Sokka shrugs it off, ducks out of the way. Somehow, his dad’s hands find him again, and he lets them stay there. 

“Sokka.” The worst part is that his dad doesn’t even sound angry, just concerned. Sokka fucking _hates_ that tone of voice. It’s haunted him for years, another reminder that something is wrong with him. There’s something worth being worried about and Sokka resents it. “We’re talking about it because you're my son and I’m worried. I know I haven’t always been the best dad, but I’m _always_ here for you. So let’s talk right now. And if you don’t want to talk to me––” Sokka knows exactly where this spiel is going, and it doesn’t do anything to calm him down. “Maybe you need to go back to your therapist. Whatever you need, I’m here, but you _can’t_ go on like this.” 

“I’m _not_ going back to therapy!” He’s yelling now. Katara has appeared in the doorway looking worried and like there’s words waiting on the tip of her tongue. Sokka can feel them from here and he shoots her a warning glare. If she tells their father about any of the things they’ve talked about, he’ll never forgive her. She must get the message because she takes a different approach.

“Sokka, maybe Dad’s right.” She’s coming into the room, approaching him. Sokka is something akin to a caged animal––angry bristling, praying mantis colors. He despises this part of himself. “Therapy helped you when we were kids. It helped me too. It could be good for you.” 

Sokka shakes his head in desperation. He’s not doing it. It never helped him. Maybe Katara thought it did, looking at it with kid eyes, but their dad and Gran know, talked about how little it was doing constantly. He doesn’t need a doctor to tell him what he already knows––that he’s useless, depressed, and a miserable person to be around. There’s nothing for him in therapy. There’s nothing for him in life.

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” he pants, hating how out of breath he sounds. He ducks past his dad and runs up the stairs, ignores Hakoda and Katara calling his name. It’s probably risky to leave them together alone. Who knows what Katara could tell him in that time, but Sokka is brimming dangerously and just barely has enough sense to know he doesn’t want his family to be any deeper in the crossfire than they just were.  
He locks his door behind him and chugs the glass of water on his windowsill. It’s stale and lukewarm, and Sokka swears he can taste pieces of dust floating in it, but he sucks it down until he feels sick then slams the cup back down with a harsh cling. 

Sokka turns his lights off and lies in his bed, all simmering anger and quickly-fleeting fight. He hates his dad. He hates Katara. Maybe. He thinks. He probably doesn’t. Staring at the ceiling, he writes a story in his head about praying mantises and sunsets. By the time he falls asleep, he’s already forgotten all but a small chunk from the end: _The dying sun watches silently as she devours her lover. He loses himself to the moonlight and wonders if this was all his life was ever meant to be._

The rest of it probably sucked anyway. 

Sokka makes it through the night without his dad storming in and demanding to see his arms, so he assumes Katara kept quiet about it all. His stomach churns when he thinks about how he talked to them, but he pushes it aside and tries to ignore the silent, tense energy in the house in the morning. His dad and sister both seem to be skating circles around him, hesitant and unsure where they stand and when to speak. 

The real showdown doesn’t happen until Sokka gets home from school. He’d taken a detour at the library to do his homework, reluctant to return to their house and face his family again. Call it a premonition, because the scene he walks into isn’t pretty.

Hakoda and Katara are waiting for him at the kitchen table, which has a stack of wrinkled papers that have clearly been uncrumpled and fleetingly straightened. At first, Sokka doesn’t know what all this is, doesn’t know what to think, but then he gets close enough to recognize the color of the ink and the way it’s smudged across the pages. He’d spent enough hours staring at all the details, it only takes a moment for him to understand what’s going on. His dad went through his stuff and he found the notes. Sokka knew he should’ve been much more diligent about emptying his trash, but eventually gave up and let the papers and garbage pile up in the bin and on the floor. He’d shoot himself right here if he could. 

“Sokka, can you please sit down so we can talk?” Hakoda’s voice is tense and quiet. Katara looks like she’s been crying, there’s guilt on her face. She probably told him, though it’s not like it matters in comparison to what’s already on display. A calamitous frenzy takes over and Sokka springs into action. He half-lunges across the table and snatches the stack of papers out from in front of his dad.

“Did you go through my shit?” Harsh and fervid. Sokka doesn’t think he’s in control anymore. “You can’t just do that. What gave you the right to––”  
“I have the right because I’m your father and there was clearly something wrong.” Hakoda stands, ready to step in and calm Sokka however necessary. Sokka sees the worry, the parental fear, and pushes back regardless. He turns on Katara.

“Did you tell him? I _trusted_ you, Katara.” There’s tears welling in his eyes and he doesn’t know what emotion lies at their root. Probably some amalgam of everything inside of him bubbling up over the surface. He can’t control himself anymore, even when Katara starts crying silently. He’d feel bad about that if this was a different moment. 

“I’m sorry, Sokka. I didn’t mean to break your trust, but I–”

“Katara didn’t tell me anything until after I had already gone through your room,” Hakoda jumps in, voice firm and no-nonsense. Sturdy in a way that Sokka usually finds calming. “I’m sorry I had to invade your privacy, but surely you understand why I felt I needed to.” He approaches Sokka like one approaches a wild dog about to be sedated, reaching for the papers to take them out of his hands. Sokka’s head is buzzing, ears ringing and eyes blurry. He has absolutely no sense of what to do anymore.

Sokka jerks the notes back. His dad has already seen them, but giving them up feels like defeat. 

“Sokka, please give them to me.” Hakoda’s tone is gentle, and Sokka looks between him and the papers feverishly. His hands shake and he pulls the papers apart, shredding them into pieces. His movements are tremulous and sudden. “Sokka, _stop._ Please. I’ve already seen them. It’s okay. I’m not mad, I just want to help you.” Hakoda approaches him as Sokka backs himself against the wall, reaching out to him slowly and cautiously. 

Sokka’s back hits the wall and it’s like a flip switch. He drops to his knees and instantly starts crying––grating, ragged sobs and gasps for air. The torn paper lies all around him like clumps of snow lined with plow-tracks. Hakoda wraps him in his arms and Sokka melts into his shoulder. He feels Katara crouch beside him and lay and hand on his back. He tries to choke out an apology but isn’t able to make his vocal cords work besides strange, disjointed wailing.  
“I’m so sorry about everything, bud,” Hakoda whispers. “We love you _so_ much. We’re going to help you.” 

His dad pulls him out of school for a few weeks for medical reasons, and Sokka spends that time in a haze of napping, therapy, and random documentaries to fill the silence. He doesn’t want to see anyone besides his family for a while, and can’t dredge up the energy to even respond to their texts. Not even Zuko’s, which he feels particularly shitty about. They all wish him the best and send their love in the group chat, and Aang and Zuko even make a point of saying multiple times that he’s under no pressure or obligation to respond, which everyone else agrees to. 

Sokka feels overwhelmed by love, and it confuses him so much. He’s so dazed by it all––all the seemingly unfounded appreciation and care. It’s like he doesn’t know what’s going on. He cries about it in therapy, and again later to Katara, and both times is told that his friends wouldn’t be there for him if he was really as unloveable as he thinks (or in Katara’s wording, “There’s a million things to love about you, you just can’t seem to see them past your thick skull.”)

His friends come to visit him during his second week of leave, and they build a nest of blankets and pillows in the living room and watch some shitty comedy. On the couch, Sokka lets Zuko wrap an arm around him and leans into his touch. His hair, out of its wolftail and hanging loose, swoops in front of his face and tickles the bridge of his nose, but Sokka ignores it. Eventually Zuko reaches down and tucks the strands behind his ear, and Sokka peers up into his eyes.  
“Are you doing okay?” he asks, voice rough and warm like Sokka loves. Sokka turns his head back into Zuko’s shoulder and watches their friends mess around and overall ignore the movie they were the ones to choose. He shrugs a shoulder and makes an indifferent noise.

“Not really, but better.” It’s strangely honest. He still isn’t used to being so vulnerable. Zuko laughs through his nose and tilts his head to lay on top of Sokka’s. He reaches for Sokka’s hand and lets him fiddle with his fingers without chiding him for his nervous energy. Zuko once told him he found Sokka’s little tics to be cute. He finds that hard to believe, but he isn’t going to pass up on the opportunity to live freely without having to mask. 

“Well that’s good, I guess.” Zuko presses a kiss into Sokka’s temple. His breath is warm and smells like jasmine tea. Sokka’s always liked jasmine tea better than matcha, though not as much as his mom and Gran Gran’s labrador tea. He’d promised Iroh weeks ago he’d teach him how to make it well. Maybe by the end of the week he’ll feel up to showering and leaving, and he can visit Zuko on his shift at the Jasmine Dragon and make tea with Iroh. It sounds nice.  
“I’m glad you’re okay, and I’m so sorry about everything, especially if I made you feel like you couldn’t come to me.” 

Sokka looks back up at Zuko and gives him a quick peck on the lips, ignoring Toph’s profession that they get a room, and Aang’s quick defense that love is beautiful and that he's glad he and Zuko are comfortable expressing theirs in front of them. Sokka smiles at Zuko––a small, feeble thing, but it’s genuine. Sokka can’t remember the last time he smiled genuinely.

“Don’t be. There’s nothing to apologize for.”

**Author's Note:**

> My first ATLA fic, hopefully it turned out okay! Thank you so much for reading, and I hope you enjoyed :))


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